“Variations”
Martina Filjak, piano
Featuring works by Beethoven and Haydn

One of the brightest instrumental talents to emerge from Croatia today, Martina Filjak is garnering international praise not only for her poetic passion and galvanizing strength at the keyboard, but also for her charismatic personality and magnetic stage presence.

Martina Filjak has performed with esteemed orchestras including The Cleveland Orchestra: the Barcelona, Bibao, Chautauqua, Tenerife, Chile and Moscow Symphony Orchestras. As a reciitalist as well as oncerto coloist, Ms. Filjak has performed in such major venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Berlin, I’Auditori and Palau de la Musica in stasbourg, Musikverein in Viennna, Shanghai Oriental Art Center and the Severance Hall in Cleveland. Miss Filjak’s competitive achievements include 1st prize at the 2009 Cleveland International Piano competition.

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Artist Series FRIENDS

“A Salute to Strings”
Michael’s On East $116/pp

To benefit the Artist Series Concerts Scholarship Program and other projects. Dinner, entertainment, silent and live auctions.

Live Auction Items: Yamaha classical guitar and case; One week at Eagle Pointe Resort in Vail, Colorado, sleeps six; Private Dinner and Entertainment for eight; 26 Lobster Pot Dinners for two; Four nights at the Casabella Farmhouse in Tuscany, Italy; and a 7-day cruise for two on Holland America choice of destinations include Caribbean, Alaska or England/Canada.

To purchase tickets:
Please call 941.306.1202
from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Monday through Friday

Recital Series

“Piano Virtuisity Then and Now”
Marina Lomazov, piano
Music of Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Kapustin

Praised by critics as “a diva of the piano” (The Salt Lake City Tribune), “a mesmerizing risk-taker” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer), and “simply spectacular” (International Music Foundation Website, Chicago), Ukrainian-American pianist Marina Lomazov has established herself one of the most passionate and charismatic performers on the concert scene today. Following her prizes in the Cleveland International Piano Competition, William Kapell International Piano Competition, Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, and Hilton Head International Piano Competition, Ms. Lomazov has given performances throughout North America, South America, England, France Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, Japan, and most of the 50 states in the USA.

Before immigrating to the United States in 1990, Marina studied at the Kiev Consevatory where she became the youngest First Prize Winner at the all-Kiev Piano Competition. Ms. Lomazov holds degrees from the Juilliard School nad the Eastman School of Music, the latter bestowing upon her the highly coveted Art9st’s Certificate – an homor the institution has not given a pianist for nearly three decades.

Lomazov is Associate Professor of Piano at the University of South Carolina School of Music, where she is also the Founder and Artistic Director of the Southeastern Piano Festival. Lomazov is a Steinway Artist.

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“It’s About Time” A Tribute to Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, the Gershwins, and more.
Gail Nelson, Singer

Gail Nelson offers a diverse performance history from stage, concerts, film and symphony with little fin on the side. Her connections reach back to Cab Calloway, Charles Strouse, Ginger Roger, Eubie Blake, the Gershwin brothers and Mitch Miller and influence her choices of songs and stories she tells.

Appearances on Broadway include both musicals and plays which also led to many touring companies across the crountry as well as national and international symphony engagements. She continues to perform in popular song revues. Gail has performed three times at Carnegie Hall, most recently a ‘sold out’ tribute to the Nicholas Brothers.

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“Two Piano”
Joseph Holt, duo piano
Lee Dougherty Ross, duo piano

What is better than one world-class pianist and a concert grand piano…clearly two pianists and two pianos. This fast paced program features popular and light classic favorites.

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“Keyboard Master”
Conrad Tao, piano
Bach, Liszt, and Ravel

16-year-old Chinese-American pianist Conrad Two was found playing children’s songs on the piano at age 18 months of age and has never look back. At age 10, Conrad was featured on the national radio program “From the Top” as both pianist and composer, and in 2007 he was featured again on PBS’s “From the Top – Live from Carnegie Hall” TV series. Conrad has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and was the only American artist invited to the Russian National Orchestra Festival at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in 2009.

To purchase tickets:
Please call 941.306.1201
from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Monday through Friday

Sunday, April 15, 2:00 p.m.

“High and Low”
Hope Koehler, soprano
JIm Douglass, piano

Hope Koehler, whose voice has been heralded as having “the richness of Marilyn Horne at the bottom and the clarion clarity of Leontyne Price at the top” has appeared in Carmen, II Trovatore, Lucia di lammermoor, Rigoletto, The Impressario, The Old Maid and the Thief, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Gianni Schicchi and many others. She has appeared in the title roles of Tosca, Carmen, Fidelio, and Madama Butterfly. She is a featured soloist with the American Spiritual Ensemble, a group whose mission is to keep the American Negro Spiritual alive and vibrant.

To purchase tickets:
Please call 941.306.1201
from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Monday through Friday

Wednesday, April 25, 10:30 p.m.

“Spanish Rhythms”
Rafael Padron, guitar
Bach, Liszt, and Ravel

Cuban born guitarist, Rafael Padron, began studying the guitar at the age of eleven. He has performed both solo and with orchestras in various cities in Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Japan, Spain and in the United States of America. Mr. Padron graduated from the Peabody Conservatory at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, where he has completed his Graduate Performance Diploma. Mr. Padron accomplished his Masters Degree Diploma at the University of Miami in December 2005. Currently, he is part of the Faculty at the Miami Conservatory of Music, at The University of Miami and at the Florida International University.

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Recital Series
Sunday, June 3, 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday, June 5, 7:30 p.m.
Historic Asolo Theater

“Kurt Weill”
Stella Zambalis, soprano
David McFerrin, baritone
Joseph Holt, piano

Soprano Stella Zambalisis a regular guest of leading opera companies throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and South America. Ms. Zambalis has created several new roles including Cherubino in The Ghosts of Versailles for the Metropolitan Opera and The Sorceress in Robert Moran’s Desert of Roses for Houston Grand Opera. On the concert stage she has performed with Houston Symphony, San Francisco and Houston Ballets, the Opera Orchestra of New York, the Little Orchestra Society in New York, and internationally with the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Berlin and the Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra of Berlin. On recordings, Ms. Zambalis may be heard as Juliet in Tchaikovsky’s unfinished work: Romeo and Juliet: Overture Fantasy (completed by Taneyev) with the Moscow Radio and Television Orchestra.

Baritone David McFerrin was praised by The New York Times for his “appealingly textured sound.” McFerrin has sung with the country’s leading opera companies and is a critically acclaimed perormer of concert and recital repertoire. Mr. McFerrin won 2nd place in the 2008 Metropolitan Opera National Council New England Region, and was recently awarded a Richard F. Gold Carrer Gant from the Shoshana Foundation, given annually to promising young American opera singers. He is a former member of the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist program. He has also been a Young Artist with the Sarasota and Central City opreas, and Completed a two-year residency in the Floirda Grand Opera Studio in Miami.

More than sixty years after his death, Kurt Weill’s music continues to be performed both in popular and classical contexts. In Weill’s lifetime, his work was most associated with the voice of his wife, Lotte Lenya, but shortly after his death “Mack the Knife” was established by Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darlin as a jazz standard. His music has since been recorded by many performers, ranging from The Doors, Judy Collins, Lou Reed, Todd Rundgren, to New York’s Metropolotan Opera and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Singers as varied as Teresa Stratas, Ute Lemper, Gisela May, Anne Sofie von Otter, Max Raabe, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Marianne Faithfull have recorded entire albums of his music.

Apart from “Mack the Knife” and “Pirate Jenny” from the Threepenny Opera, his most famous songs include “Alabama Song” from Mahagonny, “Speak Low” from One Touch of Venus, “Lost in the Stars” from the musical of that name, “My Ship” from Lady in the Dark, and “September Song” from Knickerbocker Holiday.

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Sunday, May 6, 2:00 & & 7:30 p.m.

“The Gershwins Remembered”
Mary Elizabeth Williams, soprano
Chauncy Packer, tenor
Kenneth Nichols, bass-baritone
Bob Constantino, piano

Three outstanding singers join forces to bring you the music and lyrics of the Gershwins unquestionably at the top of America’s most admired, frequently performed, and most beloved musical families. Add to that the brother’s many collaborations and you’ve got the recipe for a memorable musical experience.

Soprano Mary Williams is a major discovery, with a luxurious voice, warm beauty and sensitive musicianship that have placed her center stage with opera, symphony and concert audiences across the county and around the world.

American tenor Chauncey Packer has performed Porgy and Bess in Japan, France, Spain, and is also featured on the Porgy and Bess recording conducted by John Mauceri with the Nashville Symphony.

Bass baritone Kenneth Nichols is in his eleventh season with Lyric Opera of Chicago. He appeared in both the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Opera productions of Porgy and Bess. He has also been a regular participant in The Night of 1000 Voices, a benefit concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, since it’s inception in 1999.

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